Touchpoints do more than just grab a user’s attention within the online catalog. They are a piece of the marketing puzzle and when implemented correctly they give your online catalog an advantage over your competitors. Touchpoints are interactions between the customers and your brand, improving customer experience and encouraging product interaction. They are designed to have minimal distraction to the design of the page and photo. They can trigger actionable pop-ups, product data page or additional information links. Just like in real estate, it’s all about location(really it’s placement), especially for the mobile experience.

Planning the careful placement of a touchpoint pays off when we take the product from a desktop/tablet two page landscape experience to the mobile single page experience. Placing that touchpoint too close to the middle of a two page spread could mean that part of the icon get’s cut off or is missing entirely. The practice for touchpoints is twofold, Don’t use so many that the user can’t see the product and watch that placement. Our production team are experts at the location part of this, but always welcome input as we produce your latest catalog.

Last year the Out-of-this-World Gift Guide for Kids was a huge hit! This year we decided to continue the tradition and present the 2016 Kids Gift Guide! Maybe you’ve finished your shopping or maybe like many of us, you’re looking for that last minute gift idea. Either way, we’ve made it easy for you to browse the entire gift guide or jump to different sections using the Contents tab.

Similar to last year, we have it broken down into three sections: Educational Gifts, Unique Gifts and Magnificent Gifts (our personal favorite section). Kids can easily lend you a hand by bookmarking their favorite items. They may even see some nice educational toys that maybe weren’t on the original letter to Santa. Jolly Old St. Nick’s hat is in the toolbar which launches everyone’s favorite Santa Tracker.

We hope you enjoy the guide as much as we enjoyed building it! Feel free to share with family and friends, especially if you see something that maybe you might enjoy playing with this year. When all of the new gifts are unwrapped, some of those gently used toys may need a new home. To get you started, on the back cover of our guide, you will find several local charities who will pass along the toys that may have found their way to the bottom of the toy box.

The Holiday Shopping season is here. According to NRF online sales are expected to increase 7 to 10 percent and in-store sales are expected to increase 3.6 percent. Our online catalog has you covered when you need unique catalog solutions integrating with your existing e-Commerce. For the in-store sales surge retailers are predicted to hire an additional 640,000 to 690,000 seasonal workers. With that kind of rush, your holiday workers need to be trained quickly and efficiently! Some things to keep in mind when approaching the training:

1. Assume they are all starting from the same base level of knowledge. Experienced seasonal workers will be able to absorb the basics faster, but a refresher is generally welcome.

2. Use current employees that have good work habits to provide training and support. Nothing says you are important to us than by putting your trust in a solid employee.

3. Communicate expectations and feedback accurately and in a timely manner. Being very clear early on and holding team members accountable creates trust.

4. Put all your materials into an online training bookshelf that is easy to access by users in the store and remotely. It helps seasonal workers become more familiar with your brand and products. With our bookshelf, your training content and videos can be incorporated along side your catalogs and latest flyers. Our interactive features in the training guide keep trainees engaged and encourage learning. Giving both new and experienced employees access, enables them to see all the information you want them to have including the latest deals and product promotions that customers are shopping for.

Your seasonal workers may only be around for a few months but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be educated effectively. You’re relying on them during the busiest time of the year and hope that they come back again next year. Management will be pressed for time, so equip them with an online tool to quickly and efficiently educate your new employees. We want your guide to be the best experience for trainees and a time saver for management.

$550-$2500! That is what it costs to ship (50) 7lb catalogs to a tradeshow booth. Once these giants of print are unloaded ready for you start handing them out, you notice the struggle, it’s real! Carrying around a 7lb catalog is cumbersome and a nuisance for your booth visitors. And there’s always a chance you could run out of catalogs. Having a few print catalogs can be a part of a cohesive booth layout, but here is a better way to present and distribute your catalog information.

Why is a digital catalog better at a trade show? It doesn’t cost anything to ship and it offers the tools to share catalog content specifically for show attendees. Providing the entire catalog is easily accomplished with an offline version loaded onto a USB. For real time presentations, at the trade show, use the USB version on a large screen and watch users navigate the pages, shop for products, and create order forms. Once attendees are done interacting with the digital catalog, ask them about their experience and hand them a USB with the digital catalog on it. How impressive is that? They get to take home the catalog in their pocket with your brand on the USB, it’s an impactful way to add brand awareness.

Let’s take the trade show experience to the next level. The digital catalog is a powerful stand alone tool but when put into the hands of your sales team and combined with our Tear Pages options, it creates unlimited options of what can be shared with the prospect. Tear Pages adds a wealth of benefits to the digital catalog, empowering your sales team to create and share custom publications to the extent that they can be used as presentations! Prepared ahead of time or at the trade show, Tear Pages makes a lasting impression that can also be used as a post show follow up. You can’t go wrong with an interactive catalog that uses your existing investment in print without the actual and intrinsic cost of bringing the big books to the show!

Take your online publication to the next level and give users a fuller experience with an ad widget. Widgets can be used in a multitude of ways and will grab a user’s attention. Consider implementing an ad widget to promote a featured advertiser, alert customers of a sale, showcase a product, or encourage customers to fill out a form. The possibilities are endless!

Brady made great use of their ad widget! When browsing through their catalog certain pages trigger different widgets to appear. These widgets offer anything from a PDF downloadable promotional piece to product announcements. Schoolhouse Electric keeps it simple and clean. After browsing their Schoolhouse Electric catalog for 15 seconds a ‘request a catalog’ widget appears.

Offer your users a little guidance like Ferguson. The best feature of the Ferguson catalog is that users can create and email a list of products directly to their salesman. Boom! Now, that’s convenience. Everyone loves a good discount, Chico’s ad widget offers a 20% discount if you sign up for emails. EIS gives their preferred customers prime real estate in a rotating widget.

Using ad widgets gives you a great opportunity to increase revenue or simply create more value for your advertisers. Contact us to get more information on ad widgets.

An online publication is essential to keep your customers and clients in the know! When you have several publications our robust bookshelf is necessary for organization. This central location serves as a hotspot for users to filter, share and search through several publications at one time. While the bookshelf is amazing for external use it can be utilized internally to maintain a central location for things such as marketing collateral, newsletters, magazines and much more. If there’s a need to keep external and internal literature separate we have a multi-bookshelf solution. In fact, HD Supply has ten different bookshelfs!

A bookshelf with easy navigation and quick reference points eliminates stress and helps to reduce everyday problems for your team. A bookshelf of literature, provides users with a wide range of collateral including catalogs, sell sheets, newsletters, magazines and brochures in one convenient location. If users know it’s available it will be the one resource they go to, habitually. That equates to more people looking and engaging at the collateral.

Don’t have your team digging around the network for pieces of literature they can’t find. Give them quick access to all the literature they need in one central location with features to hone in on their specific needs. Let us help you get organized! Contact us to find out more and schedule a free demo.

“In 1960 New York City – the high-powered and glamorous “Golden Age” of advertising – Don Draper, the biggest ad man in the business, struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels.” (http://imdb.to/1Paqu9j) Meanwhile masses of sales and marketing teams were creating 3 ring binders like mad men. Piecing together all those catalogs and collateral sections together manually and adding urgent updated pages when needed.

In 1996, Nintendo 64 was released harboring some of the most influential games ever available; Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda. All while N64 was being sold in masses, some daring marketing teams moved on to file sharing the collateral on a ‘hard to find’ local drive.

Then came PowerPoint, which really didn’t come on strong until 2002. In 2002 the animation engine in PowerPoint was massively overhauled, allowing users to create advanced and custom animations. It was a great upgrade but training was needed. The files were still too large to email and there is no interactivity available.

Online file sharing through companies such as DropBox™ was the next big thing to hit, it’s great for sharing files but anyone with access to the folder can delete or move files at anytime. It’s also not going to be your go to for presenting high quality publications and content to your customers.

From sales binders to online file sharing, these widely used options lack in key areas, especially transactional sales, searching capabilities, and responsive online/offline use. No one wants to have all these options spread out randomly, it gets confusing and cumbersome for the user. Combining all your needs into one solution packed with powerful tools will arm your sales team to smoothly overcome these obstacles.

We create the online catalogs designed to increase engagement between customers and sales. By using an order form or integrating with your existing eCommerce site, the barriers to purchase are significantly reduced.

In the first four months of the Lane Style digital look book by Lane Bryant, the average number of pages per session grew by over 400%. This solidified the belief that their shoppers wanted more than one way to shop online. Check out their customer showcase, here.

The steady increase and user adoption was a result of offering consumers choices and convenience. You may call it a catalog, circular, or look book, with each one representing something slightly different. In some ways they are all similar, each containing clothing and accessories you want to feature and the represent hours of creative layout.

For their outdoor action catalogs, Moosejaw likes to keep shopping and marketing fun and they take pride in being the most fun outdoor retailer on the planet! They came to us in 2009 for their digital catalog solution that would fit with their overall Madness. We love it!

Bella+Canvas is all about quality tees and team apparel! They didn’t want to take any shortcuts for their digital catalog shoppers. Both branded catalog lines feature elements which provide the best experience for a digital catalog shopper. Reviewing the catalog usage and events, allows them to make any adjustments needed to increase the catalogs engagement with users.

Retailers know they have to be across all the channels where potential consumers are looking. Being seamless and saying ‘take your pick we’ll be there’ can increase reach and may lead to higher shopping cart value. As a full service online publication provider, we’re here to help with every step of the process, from how to upload your PDF’s all the way to marketing best practices for your new online publication.

It’s been a good year for the real estate market, and David Charron (real estate market expert) expects continued growth! Consumers purchasing new or used homes are a strong indication of future consumer purchases from furniture retailers. Retailers know that by offering multi-channel shopping options, consumers are more likely to purchase. Users want a digital catalog that’s a complement to both a print catalog and an e-commerce site.

Restoration Hardware make their printed sourcebooks a top priority and utilize the digital edition as an important complement to the print. Easily found on and tightly integrated with their website, their shoppers are able to switch from one sourcebook to the next while keeping the brand’s trademark style. Providing a one-of-a-kind shopping experience is the number one goal for our digital catalogs. The same can be said for MacKenzie-Childs. They care about giving their customers an engaging opportunity to shop through their catalog whether it’s in print or on any connected device.

Allow your customers to immerse themselves in an online catalog where they can interact and easily shop your furniture brand. Online activity drives retail sales more than ever, whether they browse online and then shop at brick and mortar or purchase directly from the online catalog.

Once your print catalog is published, it’s out the door and you can’t track how or when users engage with it. However, if you choose to expand your brand with a digital catalog not only can you view the overall traffic your catalog is receiving, but also individual page views and how customers discovered your interface. Now, with that being said, it sounds like it’s quite simple, right? But Google Analytics definitely has a learning curve. To simplify everything, we created a Basic Google Analytics Guide for your Dirxion Digital Publication.

If you already have a Dirxion Digital Publication or you’re just curious about how Google Analytics can help give you a better understanding of the way consumers shop, visit http://www.dirxion.com/GoogleAnalyticsGuide/ to download a free guide.